Friday, May 1, 2009

Tips to Reduce Stress

Tips to Help Families Deal with Stress

We are all dealing with increased levels of stress in both our professional and family lives. Our children experience our stress as well as their own. Here are some tips to help your children, and the entire family, cope with stress more effectively.

1. Create daily, quiet moments with each child. Offer time to talk about how things are going, to ask, tell, discuss and listen. A few quiet minutes for airing little worries can prevent them from growing into big ones.

2. Listen to your child when he or she is ready to talk. Try to stop what you are doing at the moment and engage with him or her. If it's not a good time, schedule a date for an hour later. Avoid trying to always fix problems, just listening is powerful.

3. As a family, share ways that you effectively deal with stress. Let your child know that you feel stress and that you can cope with it. This is reassuring and is effective modeling.

5. Encourage drawing, storytelling, creative play and physical activities that are healthy, readily available ways to discharge anxiety. Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress.

6. Talk about stressors in the family rather than trying to hide them. Even when you think children don't understand the stressors in your life, they can sense them. It’s not necessary, nor fair, nor wise to share all adult problems with kids, but they probably sense when things are not right. Offer reassurance when you can and create an environment in which it’s ok to ask questions.

7. Share perspective. Remind children that although they may be having a really bad hour, or a really hard morning, somewhere in this day some nice things will happen too. At the dinner table, ask each person to offer a positive or highlight of his/her day.

If your child is having great difficulty dealing with stress please contact your school Prevention Specialist. We are here to help!

About Me

Dana's Bio:
Dana received her Master’s Degree in Psychology from Duke University in 1997 and her Doctorate in Psychology with a Concentration in Organizational Behavior from Duke University in 1999. She started her professional career as the Director of Human Resources for a small start up, Technology company in North Carolina. She then started her own Executive Coaching practice specializing in technology companies. After moving to Scottsdale AZ, Dana began teaching Developmental Psychology as an adjunct faculty member at Paradise Valley Community College. She also developed parenting and sign language workshops for families in the community and worked as a parenting instructor for two local non-profits. In 2006, Dana served as the Executive Director for a non-profit organization, North Central Parenting Group. Dana joined Scottsdale Prevention Institute (SPI) in 2007 as a Prevention Specialist at Cherokee Elementary School. Currently, Dana is serving as SPI’s school program director. She is responsible for overseeing the school prevention specialists as well as developing new school and community prevention programs.